


Find Out Who's There For Me

by orphan_account



Series: All Roads Lead to Ankh-Morpork [3]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Family, Gen, Irene and Adora Belle are cousins okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-29
Updated: 2012-03-29
Packaged: 2017-11-02 16:31:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/371075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blood is thicker than water, and Irene and Adora Belle know exactly how thick the bond between cousins can be.</p>
<p>Part of the "All Roads Lead To Ankh-Morpork" series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Find Out Who's There For Me

**Author's Note:**

> This came out because I couldn't stop thinking of Irene and Adora Belle as cousins. I don't know why, but the idea really appealed to me, and the next thing I knew, I was writing this.
> 
> Please don't kill me.

Adora Belle is eight when she first meets her ten-year-old cousin Irene. The clacks has just taken off, the Grand Trunk is making money in both the clacks and this Internet business, and she’s growing tired of watching the pony prance around.

“You’re new,” she says to the girl, who is making her doll dance.

“I am,” the girl says. “I’m Irene.”

Adora thinks it over, then carefully says, “You’re not gonna laugh, right?”

“I’ll try,” Irene replies.

“My name’s Adora Belle,” she tells her, and Irene only gives her a strange, unreadable look that suggests she’s pitying her. And Adora hates being pitied, especially over her name.

“That’s a funny name,” Irene comments, a corner of her mouth turning up in a smirk, but to her credit, at least, she doesn’t giggle. And despite the funny name comment and the half-smirk, Adora can’t help but think maybe, just maybe, she can bear hanging out with this girl.

—

“I’m going to work with clay someday,” she says to Irene one day, after her father takes her to the university. “I’m going to make clay men.”

“You don’t know how to make pottery,” Irene replies, as she ties her hair up in a bun.

“I’ll learn,” Adora stubbornly counters.

“Well, we’re going to be busy when we grow up,” the older girl remarks. “I’ll be an actress, and you’ll be a…a…sculptor?”

“Maybe,” she allows.

“Are you sure?” Irene wonders. “I’ve seen your drawings. They’re terrible.”

Adora grins. That’s what she likes about her cousin—honest, intelligent, ambitious, willing to do anything to get her way. She’s seen the older boys fall all over themselves to give Irene something, like their gifts will make them stand out any more in her mind. She’s seen her give them a smile, enjoying the power she holds over them more than any gift they could possibly give to her.

“I’ll work with clay someday,” she says. “I don’t know how, but I will.” She thinks the next part over, then, resolutely, says, “And I’m not going to fall in love either, if every boy is an idiot like you say they are.”

“Good for you, Adora.” She presses an affectionate kiss to the top of her forehead, and Adora revels in the fact that she gets to see this tender side of her cousin more than most. “Good for you.”

—

Years pass. Irene moves away to England, but she visits every so often. Dreams of sculptures and audiences transform as they grow, into dreams of clay men and riding crops.

“Really, Adora,” Irene remarks. “Golems? I thought you wanted to be a sculptor someday.”

“Really, Irene,” Adora mimicks. “Blackmailing people? I thought you wanted to be an actress.”

“Actresses don’t get to misbehave,” the older girl shoots back. “How’s your little golem research moving along?”

“I know a bit,” she says. “They have words in their head, that tell them what to do and keep them alive. Like a brain and heart combined. They work without complaint, without rest. And they don’t lie.”

“How straightforward,” Irene notes. “I suppose that’s why people don’t like them, then?”

“People are stupid,” Adora brazenly says. “Golems are fantastic creatures, they just don’t see the world like we do.”

“And you see the world like they do?” her cousin asks.

“I try.” She rounds on her then, her stare intense, and almost hopes it bores into her older cousin’s stubborn head. “All this blackmail, all this misbehaving won’t get you anywhere but dead.”

“It’s for _protection_ ,” Irene tells her, her head held up, wearing her haughtiness like a cloak. “Honestly, how many times do I have to tell you this?”

“Maybe it protects you now,” Adora says, her voice low, almost a growl, “but one day it’ll turn on you. One day, you’ll slip up, and your protection won’t do a thing to save you.”

“It won’t happen. I’m sure of it.”

And there is that arrogance, that haughtiness, that surety that always grates on her nerves. Irene is older than she is, but sometimes Adora wonders just who is the wiser between them, with the older girl’s propensity for blackmail—no, sorry, _protection_ —and causing scandals everywhere she goes, making boys and girls alike fall in love with her. All this misbehaving is going to get Irene in trouble someday, if not soon, and if not by Adora’s hands, then by the hands of someone far worse.

Far, _far_ worse.

—

“We lost everything,” Adora whispers, the day after her world collapses in front of her.

“Not everything,” Irene says, and for once her cloak is lifted, for once she sounds tender. “You still have your pride. You’re still breathing.”

“That damn Reacher Gilt stole everything out from under us,” she snarls. “I knew we shouldn’t have trusted him.”

“Oh, but he was clever, Adora,” Irene approvingly says. “I’m almost impressed.” Then her tone lowers to a soft, dangerous hiss. “But he messed with my cousin.”

“A little misbehaving won’t work on him,” Adora tells her. “He won’t fall for it. And I won’t let you. It’s too dangerous.”

“Since when have I let that stop me?” Irene asks.

“Since now,” she snarls. “I don’t like your little misbehaviors, but I do my best to tolerate them. But this, Irene, is not a simple kiss to photograph for protection. It won’t be resolved with a crack of your whip or a flutter of your lashes. All those will do is get you in more trouble than you’re used to.”

“Don’t you want to stop him?” her cousin asks.

“I do,” Adora says. “But I don’t know a way. I’ll find one, though. There has to be one.”

“Good luck, then.”

—

“I didn’t know you smoked.”

Adora breathes in the smoke, lets the nicotine flood her body. She’s never felt so alert, so alive. “If you kept in touch, you’ll know I started two months ago.”

“And you say the things I do are dangerous,” Irene teases.

“Still do,” Adora replies, blowing out the smoke. “John’s going to start up another one.”

“Really?” the older woman asks. “I always did think he was clever. Do you think he’ll manage it?”

“He’s been working on it for a while,” Adora says. “It’s about time.”

“Yes,” Irene agrees. “It is. Now, how’s this little Golem Trust of yours?”

“It’s going perfectly,” she says, and she thinks her eyes must be sparkling, with the nicotine and the subject they’ve steered into.

“Besides the anti-golem graffiti?” Irene asks, and she stiffens. “Oh, don’t act so surprised. I dropped by the office earlier, while you were out.” She sighs. “People can be so dim sometimes.”

“This is Ankh-Morpork,” she says. “What were you expecting?”

—

Her brother falls, and with him, whatever innocence Adora had left falls as well.

“He killed him,” she snarls. “I don’t care what they say, Reacher Gilt killed my brother.”

“It won’t help now, Adora,” Irene says. “Look, my offer’s still open. Anytime you want—”

“No,” she cuts her off. “I’ve just lost my brother, on top of everything else when the Grand Trunk was stolen. I’m not going to lose you as well.”

Irene says nothing to that.

—

She doesn’t hear from her for a long while, after that.

—

“Trust me,” Moist von Lipwig says, and Adora Belle Dearheart finds herself falling with every word he says. Even the lies, even the half-truths, even the mostly-a-truths. Especially those.

Falling in love isn’t as bad as her eight-year-old self once thought it was. In fact, it’s almost as good as nicotine, if not better.

And if Moist is an idiot sometimes, well, he’s _her_ idiot, and really, to her, that's all that matters.

—

Sherlock Holmes shoots to the top of the world in a few months, and Adora wonders just what it is about the detective that has her fiancee looking rather nostalgic. She can’t help but feel a bit jealous about it.

Then, days after Moist’s trial, Sherlock Holmes falls, like her brother.

—

Irene shows up at her doorstep one day, her newly-blonde hair down, wearing a modest white blouse and skinny jeans. Adora blinks at her when she opens the door.

“The outfit’s unlike you,” she remarks.

“Thank you,” Irene replies.

“Care to explain?” she asks.

“Maybe,” is the enigmatic response.

“Come in, then.”

—

She told her. She told her that protection would turn on her someday. She’d known it would, the day Irene first misbehaved. She’d known someone would show up who wouldn’t fall for her misbehaviors, who would be the first one the Woman fell for. And now, technically, her cousin is dead.

Technically, because she is sitting in her chair drinking tea, which is something _definitely_ dead people do not do.

“So,” she says, “what brings you here?”

“I’m in hiding,” Irene—or, as her fake papers say, Ellen Pinner—replies. “But sooner or later, I’ll need a job, a place to stay, while I figure out what to do next.”

“Why come to me, then?” Adora asks. “I thought you didn’t like golems.”

“I never said I didn’t,” she responds, smiling that mysterious smile of hers. “Besides, you’re one of the few people who aren’t out to kill me.”

“True,” she allows. “As it happens, I’ve been needing an assistant…”

—

“You two,” Moist begins, his gaze darting between the ginger-haired Sherlock and the blonde Irene, “know each other?”

“Intimately,” Irene remarks.

“Something like that,” Sherlock says.

Adora catches her cousin’s nod and half-smirks, ushering her fiancee out the door.

The last thing she hears, before she shuts the door behind her, is Irene saying, “Well, Mr. Holmes. You gave me quite a scare.”

—

_Fin_

**Author's Note:**

> The "Ellen Pinner" thing is actually a bit of a reference to one of the ACD stories, known as "The Adventure of the Stockbroker's Clerk", or something like that. Maybe John and Sherlock went on that case, maybe they didn't, but I couldn't resist the opportunity to sneak in that reference, especially since Stanley used to be known for his obsession with pins.
> 
> And if anyone wants to correct my math, please do! I stink in that area.


End file.
